How are new sites supposed to make it?

What type of local business are you running and how much competition is in your area? For starters, proper Google places and citations are important for local seo, along with any local business listing/directories.

Blue,

It is hard, your niche is tough but not impossible. Right now it's overwhelming. I think you just realized how big of a commitment doing it yourself is going to be. You will need lots of content, lots of citations and lots of links to overcome your competitor because he is firmly established online and offline. You have a good base of information now, you know most of what you need to know, now it's just a matter of doing the work.

We will all be here along the way, did you get my email?

-Dolly

If you have a legit site, it's not too difficult to get links, doesn't matter how old the site is.

If you have an MFA, Amazon scraped page, squeeze page, etc... then sure, your going to struggle to get links, unless your good at blasting & taking whatever $hit links stick.

One thing you could do yourself is create a blog that you can post unique content on every so often and some how incorporate your business into the blog and have it link back to different pages on your site as well as other related blogs and sites (not competitors). This will help increase your traffic and your backlinks in time, it won't happen over night. Then you have guest postings that you can do, and if you're lucky enough you can find a blogger that is connected and have him or her submit blog posts to their connected network... Just make sure you are putting 2-3 links in each post and using a variety of keywords and not just your money keywords, use click here, view here,

Welcome to 1996.
PageRank - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Its not impossible to make it as a new site, all you need is a good strategy and a safe technique that will get you to the top. Read this -
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...th-period.html

A great strategy for beginners would be to choose a SMALL niche (with really a low competition) and try to rank on 1st page while building backlinks from forum and article marketing and meanwhile do NOT forget to use WarriorForum to learn new things about SEO!

If you are going to go the blog commenting route just know that it is by nature kind of spammy. Make sure it's worth your time to drop that comment:

-Is the site/post a relevant place to drop your link? Should "make sense"
-Are there tons of out bound links already on this post?
-Are there spam links on this post?
-Is it auto approve? (shudder)
-What's the page PR (not domain PR)?
-Will your link be no-followed?

I'll drop a link if it's a related site, good PR on the post (or I think the post will get PR based on the track record of other posts in the blog.)

I do care about no-follow, to a point, but if I think it could drive traffic I might drop it even if it's no-follow.

Then... the comment. You said it... add value. I want to make it so good that the webmaster will allow my link only because it would be a shame to delete such a thoughtful and useful comment. Doesn't have to be butt-kissing though. Correct them (nicely) if they are plain wrong about something they said. Disagree constructively on points that are up for debate. Expand further on a point they've made. Statistics are great, people love numbers to back up something they've said (or even to discount it, just be nice.)

Anyways, blog commenting can be time consuming, there are more effective ways of building links JMO but if you are going to do it, do it right.

@Jacksarloks, that sounds like the exact opposite of what I have read you should do. Hunting down tons of low quality back links is what penalizes you with penguin / panda. Same with article websites such as ezine article. Ezine article used to be very powerful, it still has its uses it seems, but its not worth the weight it once was.

How are new businesses supposed to make it? You have to be better at or do something different from the rest that people want.

This is what it boils down to, and sorry if this is harsh, but if you don't have this down to pat then where exactly is your business?

For new sites, it may take a while for your site to come into the SERPs if it is already not ranking (this goes for all
new websites building links for the first time). Just continue working on targeted traffic by putting high quality content, updating your website often and making sure that your website is easy to navigate for great user experience. The link velocity should also be taken one step at time or build links slowly. Get links from different types of authority domains - contextual links from wiki, web 2.0s, social bookmarking, blogposts, document sharing, video, press release, etc. Google can easily see or index those links coming from the sites with higher authority.

Your website needs to offer something valuable. It's as simple as that. The more valuable it is, the higher it will rank on Google. It's not hard for GOOD new sites to get ranked, it's just hard for crappy and spammy new sites to get ranked, which we should all be thankful for because it means you have to know what you're doing to get ranked in Google.

Look man, its not hard.

Its only hard when you don't know what you're doing.
Most people don't even try to rank a site and will do a bit of backlinking and give up.

Or you make so many mistakes because your new and give up.

What I do basically, is start ranking a site 6-9 months before I actually need it ranked. Thats how I look at SEO now. And my process is streamlined better now so I KNOW beforehand not to expect results for 6 months or so.

My first site, I had no idea what I was doing, it took 8 months about.

My second site, its taken about 6 months.

But I didn't just focus on SEO for my second site. I'm dominating local search/directories and youtube as well, and I get an awful lot of traffic from those 2.

So don't just focus on ranking a site. Do SEO, tons of geotargeted pages/keywords on the site, get listed and reviewed in as many local search directories as possible (order citation gigs on fiver) and make a ton of geotargeted youtube videos and rank them.

If you keep at it for 6+ months, you can wind up with a very consistent flow of phone calls. This week was our best week so far and its not even close to sunday yet (9 calls, 2 emails). Our highest keyword only gets 720 searches a month which is fairly low search. But we target a lot of keywords, in 3 different areas, and thats what helps us the most.

In another 6 months, we'll likely double our calls, then we'll have a nice little local business thats fairly lucrative. My brother takes all the calls and gets the crews to do the work, then cuts me my 10% commission. So if a job sells for $8,000, I get $800. Its something I love to do. This is my second site now that gets decent leads and I plan on making a third site in a couple of weeks (a local painting site).

Between those 3 sites together, I can see us getting between 30-50 calls a month, and I'll be damn good money.

THEN, I might even do another site.

But seriously, get to work!! It sucks in the begining. I mean I didn't feel like I had any clue what I was doing for the first 6 months. But once you start building up your online real estate, your assests, your investments... once they begin to produce good traffic & conversions, good money... you just keep reinvesting, building them up more... and there is really no end to how large you can take it.

For all I know in another 5 years I can own 20-25 local sites, all ranked in their respective industries. I'll continue to help my brother with our own business (which targets 3 niches), and in the other 20 niches I'll just sell leads locally.

Just keep in mind that years are going to pass by whether you do something or do nothing. Most small local businesses go under. And I do feel like bad management has a lot to do with it. But more specifically I think it comes down to a lack of organization and consistency. They're always begging for the next job, living paycheck to paycheck. Looking for the next "score" of leads. Will it be service magic? Will it be valpak? lol. Should I start SEO for a month and give up again? Should I blow $500 in adwords then complain that it doesn't work because my site looks like shit and I have no good reviews online? I know as far as contractors go at least, in my state, most of them are a disorganized mess of shit. Always blaming the economy for their problems.

It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, if you can't find people to work for, you are f##ked. So get to work finding those people and stop looking for excuses. Most of all feel confident every single time you take action, because you know that dozens of your competitors are still sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. That was the most powerful thing I've learned just by being friends with a bunch of local business owners. Some are very successful, but most of them don't have a clue wtf they're doing. And there is something very powerful about realizing that. I may be insecure, but every night I go to bed I smile just thinking about how stupid some people are.

-Red

I really don't know why some people advice to make wikis, web2.0's, blog comments, article submission and all kinds of other rubbish. Seriously, why should people spend hours and hours by writing some nonsense content and then upload them to different N/A pages.. Half of them will never ever get even indexed by Google. Why? Because, Google thinks they are *#(¤! and that's why your backlinks from such pages are )#¤?)" as well...

wikis and other kind of spammed to death directories might have worked pre-2012, but they surely don't work now. Atleast in SERP that has some sort of competiton. Of course, you can rank keywords like "best places to hang out" or "car brand logos" with those spammy links, but not the real stuff.

I have a new site(Livinsport link in signature) It has been hard to get traffic and grow my site but if you work hard and have a great site you can do it. It takes a lot of grunt work but it is a doable job. I work every day for a few hours just promoting my site. I find that it works if you work hard. Build links, talk to people, just spread the word.!!!

Some say SEO is dead, but it's improving day-by-day crushing new web-masters! Go in 90's way!

1)Start your own article base or blog, write articles based on your related content.

2)Create a sitemap and make sure google, bing etc indexes it.

3)Contribute to authority site's through guest posting, If they like your content, they link back 1 or 2 related links to your web site/blog.

4)Engage in social communities.

5)social sharing(slide, doc's, video) to top ranking site's(1-5 max)


Takes pretty good time to get rankings, but would surely benefit for a long time.

Purely google, bing etc friendly!

Hello Bluehabit,

I know how frustrating this must be to try to make it to a good place in search engine rankings such as with Google. The key here is to remember there are many factors that affect your ranking status, not only backlinks. Backlinks are one of those vital components; however there are other important factors as well. Here are some of the most vital to your website's rankings.

1. Keywords

This is one is at the heart of search engine rankings because every URL or link on your own site and on the web will have your keywords front and center. This is automatically telling all the search engines what your site is about and the content in your site.

2. Backlinks

Before the Panda Empowered Google, Many SEO experts would have suggested high quality backlinks to be the overriding factor for high rankings. Now many experts suggest on page and on site metrics to be the more important factor after Panda.

3. Social Media

In the last few years or so the importance of the Social Media connection is becoming visible to many experts. After all, getting thousands of Facebook likes, Twitter tweets, and Google plus ones will only have positive results for your website.

These are currently 3 of the most important factors to boost your rankings with Google and others.
I hope this helps.